… has* had resulted in work on my novel The Last of the Steamers grinding to an unsatisfying halt.
Richard, you absolute prat!
Spare time kills a writer’s productivity, I read once, and they were right.
I’ve realised that, when I motor into it, I can crank out a chapter in about six days. But since I put out Chapter 1 – which people have, wonderfully, reacted positively to, I hit a brick wall. I lost touch with where I was – where do I pick up? Do I carry on along the dark, lampless path up and down into the wilderness of The Unedited Morass, or do I restart and properly polish up, from the end of my pretty-much-complete Chapter 1 what had gotten a lickspittle of work on it so far?
I have six chapters that have so far received a deal of straightening up, but nothing to the extent Chapter 1 has been scrubbed, straightened, had it’s hair flattened off and it’s shoes polished and made ready for church. These five scamps have managed to get out of bed, brushed off their bed-heads but are still wearing their shirts creased and untucked with their ties in a horrible, fat knot that oozes an air of indifference.
And, for my sins, I have embarked on a foolhardy task: to over-prepare and write out in gratuitous detail the events of every main character that preceded the start of my novel and use some magical software that I’m yet to discover to map it all out in intertwining plot threads of various attractive pastel colours and text boxes in a way that illustrates concisely the plethora of complex plots, sub-plots and hump-back-bridge-plots that have coalesced in my mind.
Screw it, I’ve picked up where I left off at the end of Chapter 7. I dreaded to open that Word document at this time to check, but now I’ve gotten back in, I’m pleased to report that’s where I am. But enough of the disjointed focus. It’s time to write a freakin’ novel again. No more ad-hoc writing periods of transient length. No more fretting about how I’ll shoehorn in another obscure plot point that occurs to me in the middle of the night, though they’ll still get preserved on paper for later.
This is my first real draft since emerging with a 50,047-word lump ready to be whittled down into something I want to share. And I’m sure there’ll be a second, and a third. I just have been finding myself disappointed in myself, in a rut, in losing steam completely.
I think another point that might have turned me off writing the novel is the fact that I have a mind full of brimming ideas and thoughts that are awesome and wondrous, but my narrative at the moment is nowhere near that point. I have a lot of groundwork to write, which I will do. I don’t really want to make it sound like the beginning of my book is a drag, which is how it might sound here. It will be awesome, and I’m sure once the back end is in place, the front will line up accordingly. That’s the plan, anyway.
The blog has helped, though annoyingly also my Drafts folder is depressingly-occupied with the forgotten genesises of blog posts, some of which I will resurrect. As long as I’m writing something, yes…
500 words a day is nice, I think. It’s not too much, I can get some good scenes in, and yes, I can progress towards what my brain is itching to write! That’s good! I can’t wait to write it, and I can’t wait for you all to read it! I’m so enthusiastic about this project, I’d hate for it to be a flash in the pan. I’m seeing the past 34 days of suffering from writer’s block – there, I said it in full! – has actually given me some much needed breathing space to coalesce what I want to do and how I could accomplish it with my story. I’m genuinely convinced my story is going to be compelling and enjoyable; I’d hate to let all my friends down now.
Oh, the perils of writing one’s first novel, eh? And I’m only 21…
Monologue over, readers.
*Ho-yeah, I’m back into writing it!
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